The residents of Adarsh Palm Retreat and surrounding areas in Bellandur are staging a peaceful protest and forming a human chain on August 20th to highlight traffic congestion and pollution in and around their community. This is not the first time that the residents are staging a protest to highlight the pressing issues that have been neglected for long. From time to time the residents have gathered to demand for a livable Bellandur.
Traffic woes have plagued the residents of Bellandur ever since office buildings have taken over and surrounded them, hindering their access to the Outer Ring Road (ORR). It takes them more than 45 minutes to cover just 1.5 kilometres on internal roads to reach the Outer Ring Road.
A 2km drive takes more than an hour. A screenshot of a recent Uber trip by a resident.
Residents want the government to get urban planners and experts, execute the right solution (Metro, mini bus, wider roads, magic box or whatever is suitable), show the results and then start new construction in this area. Laws related to congestion, pollution, road width are being side tracked by using the Outer Ring Road (instead of inner roads) as the reference.
Date and Time: 20 August, 2019 from 9am to 10.30am
Meeting points:
- Along the RMZ Road from The Bay to the Outer Ring Road, Bellandur
- Footpath at Outer Ring Road Eco space and spread towards Bellandur Main road and towards Sarjapur road
Major issues
These points have been shared by residents.
New Constructions: Adding to the already existing woes, RMZ, the real-estate developer behind Ecospace and Ecoworld projects is now coming up with 2 new office buildings with several towers, each with Ground +13 floors, that will bring in approximately another 1,00,000 people to use this single, narrow 40 ft. wide road, right outside the community. The construction is expected to start soon on the demolished hotel plot acquired by RMZ soon. There are also talks of a new third building on the other side of Devarabisanahalli lake too. With all the traffic woes faced today to reach the main road during peak times, these new buildings are are expected to add to that delay. Neither the builders nor the government has put any thought to how traffic is going to be managed after these new building are occupied.
There are no radial roads to distribute this load and disperse it in different directions. There are no plans to widen the roads and rectify the existing situation and instead more burden is being added to the internal roads causing massive traffic backups.
The traffic congestion on the road that links Adarsh Palm Retreat and Outer Ring Road RMZ Ecoworld.
Threat to life: There have been a number of deaths of our near ones, because of lack of access to medical facilities in time. One resident complained that she had to personally drive her father to the hospital in an emergency as the ambulance was stuck in traffic trying to enter the internal roads. In another instance, the ambulance to cover the entire 1.5 km distance on the wrong side putting oncoming traffic at risk.
The key demands from residents:
- Access to Outer Ring Road should not take more than 10 minutes during peak hours for Adarsh Palm Retreat residents.
- In general 5 minutes for a km all around Bellandur. Hopefully, BBMP will step in to fix this.
- Until the BBMP doesn’t step in to fix the problem, no new construction to start. We are already over capacity.
- We need solutions in place and RWAs must sign off that they are working effectively before any new development.
This article is based on information provided by residents of Bellandur.
Action is necessary at the earliest before a major catastrophe occurs
I have given up.We have gone past any correction in this area. The ORR, Belandur, Sarjapur Road areas must literally be the worst areas to stay in Bangalore. This is all due to the greed of governments and certain businesses and absolutely no urban planning to be seen. I think the terms urban/town planning are unheard of by the various government departments. It’s simple,If there are resources/space for say a 1000 people in an area but there are 100000 people what else is going to happen and yet they keep on creating new IT parks and buildings.We don’t have proper roads, nor water, no safe ways to cross roads, no pavements. What the f are we even paying tax for! And its not like the authorities can’t see it. They DO see it, yet they choose to do nothing about it! It’s pure government apathy and corruption!
Dude, how much govt can support. Please do car pool and demand for public transport.
I feel for this issue government cont help in any ways, we (public) need can do by just stopping usage of solo car driving. Just think..
Basic amenities like roads from the Govt. are not available for all citizens living here or citizens for work. This includes roqda, water and proper supply of electricity too!
First they have to make a rule.. every tech park building should have compulsory skywalk ways for people crossing..
MNC’s wake up. Demand infra before investing in Bangalore
We are protesting silently this morning for Better living environment in Bellander area. Environment unfriendly planning in the last two decades has caused socio-physical and biological environmental degradation in this area. Concerned agencies and stakeholders should be aware of this grave situation.
Good initiation.. will support d protest
ORR is a IT hub for businesses. Buying houses in this area is your mistakes. Don’t blame the government for this.
Time for peaceful protest is gone. These corrupt govt officials doesn’t want to help people, they are only here to make money. Until unless we take extreme steps these guys will not understand.
Why govt is giving permission to build housing society?
Boss…since you are not residing, don’t simply blame the residents..When I travel to JP Nagar from Eco Space, it takes around an hour sometimes to reach ORR from Eco Space last building. What about that? Government is taking property tax, it has approved residential development then people have all rights to demand better infra. Have you seen the roads in areas like doddakkannelli, devarabeesanahalli etc..they are horrible and dangerous. Before being insensitive, try to see the issue and then speak.
Why is Govt allowing Residential complexes here? While approving business offices, are they thinking of commute of the employees…? Offices don’t work without people, and people need space to live.. does the govt have a plan to segregate residential and business Parks.. and with that give organized commute from their residence to office? If not.. Its simply a Govt failure my friend!!!
Excellent initiative.
I think all companies in Bangalore would encourage wfh as a Green initiative. Bangalore desperately needs to cut out on the carbon footprint and it is only possible if the top management of IT companies enter the mission.
Excellent initiative. Easiest solution is to encourage Work From Home.
I think all companies in Bangalore should encourage wfh as a Green initiative. Bangalore desperately needs to cut out on the carbon footprint and it is only possible if the top management of IT companies enter the mission.
I struggle everyday to commute through this patch. Most of the companies have pulled their employees to Bellandur and ORR offices such as Oracle,Honeywell, Microsoft etc.. in recent past only they added 10000 employees to commute through this road. There are many solution to this road but yes government should act with urgency on road widening and skywalk. However that’s not going to solve the purpose unless companies switch their mode of operations. They should offer wfh and this should be distributed among all week days to off burdens on others in sequential fashion. Office Timing also should be updated and should be followed strictly to give a way to those company people only. All water tankers and bus should be routed to service roads so the two wheeler and four wheelers should be attended well in time for work.
I wonder who are these Stupid people who invest lots of money to buy Flats/Houses in Adarsh Palm.
Community around technology parks shouldn’t block the approaches
Government has a lot to do..They need to widen roads to meet the demand coming from newer constructions, quality of roads are horrible adding to the woes, traffic rules enforcement like signal jumping, rash driving, lane indiscipline should be strict , heavy vehicle movement adds to the problem by not just spoiling the poor quality roads further but by parking wherever they feel like by bribing officers etc…water tankers, tempo travellers all drive rashly and park on roads congesting the roads further. No footpaths in interior roads like Devarabeesanahalli, Doddakkannelli etc are also gifted by government. And they did not start Metro here initally when traffic was less and built somewhere else. Even now Metro construction is slow. When they start constructing Metro here, it would create even bigger hell for us. Once public transport is better then it would encourage people to not use solo cars. Who likes to drive in such bad traffic and worst roads BTW. Also buses stop in bus stops and drive like idiots. They stop parallely instead of back to back adding to narrowing down the roads besides causing inconvenience to passengers and other commuters.that also have to stop
Take it to the HC. If BBMP was serious, they would have considered by now.
I don’t believe this protest will open anybody’s eye to safeguard citizens life. If you see the IT parks in the outer ring road stretch, it has already touched or exceeded the limits of the land usage if we consider the number of vehicles swarming around the IT parks. Government is not serious about improving the public transport by widening the roads or relocating the IT corridor expansion to outer areas. Consider the newly constructed IT park near to the carmalaram railway station. The traffic authorities are well known by the factor that the traffic congestion which happens in the wipro road stretch in the peak hours. Still they gave the permission to build the IT park. So if this is the seriousness that the authority is showing , then it would be the case for rest of the projects.
Good initiative by the residents. But cannot expect much from any Govt body. One of the main reasons for areas like this in Bangalore is the stupidity of public. When we are investing in a flat (our entire saving + loan for almost half our life time), we don’t even care about the sources of water, waste management, the approach roads to the apartment etc etc.. We being the educated mass, should be cautious while investing. If all the people stop investing on such poorly planned apartments, the next builder will think twice before doing the same mistakes. Also, we are all selfish, we want to stay as closer to office as possible, so the commercial space and living spaces are built in the same locality ending in situations like this. The damage is already done. We can only do damage control. But for this, we all might need to do sacrifices. Are we ready??
There’s no point in silent protest by standing beside road..BBMP will only encourage it…
The root of the problem is lacking of people’s lane discipline and driving sense. Widening the roads or protests will not help to de-congest the roads. 4 wheelers should maintain 3 lanes and 2 wheelers go in between the 3 lanes. The right side lane should be for traffic going straight and no one taking an exit into service lane should be blocking this lane for straight traffic. I always see the right side lane blocked by vehicles taking a left turn. This results in pile up of traffic. With no discipline, making a six lane road will also not help. Why blame government when solution is within us.
This is self-created issue by the builders , SEZs, govt & people. Why everyone wants to come here, why companies are adding more work force in these offices inspite of the traffic congestion. I work on RMZecoworld for the past 3.5 years. In these past 3 years have seen Honeywell consolidating from bannergatta to here, wellsfargo, Intel adding 2 building around 10k capacity each, Flipkart moving to ETV, Microsoft …etc all these additions in a 2-3 kms . When RMZ ecoworld ( adarsh ) was built there was no planning at all they did not think about the traffic and plan just minting money by building more office space ,now complaining about traffic is absolute rubbish.
Solution is we need to take drastic measures
1. odd /even like in Delhi
2. One day mandatory work from home in a week ( reduces 20% traffic on any given day)
3. SEZ’s to provide commute, no private vehicles to enter these SEZs only SEZ vehicles
There is no point. Bangalore is having literally dead infra. Adarsh Palm guys are super rich people, if their voice is not heard, imagine about normal people. BBMP cares a damn if people even die on roads! Is there atleast 1 road in Bangalore which is not dug up and free of potholes and is also having less traffic?
Ministers, MPs and MLAs are busy in horse trade and very eager to multiple their asset, no time to watch the public grievances.
I see some blaming public who bought houses there.
Government has to be blamed. Because it’s them who put seal of approval. Citizens don’t have full picture when the book an apartment.
I suggest like done in Noida. People should move to court
The only solution i forsee is to have their own flyover lane diversion for every tech park . This need of the hour before they mess up with metro construction.
Now the metro digging has started in the middle of ORR . This will occupy all the inner service road and 40% of the entire ORR will only result in 3x delays.
The minimal one can do which can improve things is not take your own car and share, I see so many people driving alone in big cars when they can easily share, I understand there is no proper transport connectivity but that doesn’t give us liberty to take our own four wheeler on road and add to menace.
Citizen Matters has been a really good portal in reporting civic issues. But this article does not meet the high standards set by the previous articles published on this portal. Not enough research has been done by its team and feelings of some residents have been passed on as facts in this article. I take this opportunity to raise the concern on the accuracy of the article.
Adarsh Palm retreat is a scam similar to Adarsh Housing scam is Mumbai.
BDA is not an organisation of fools that approves any building without proper planning on roads. I have the answer. BDA comes up with several master plans from time to time (for example CDP 1995, RMP 2015, 2031). All these maps are available on multiple websites. Assume that I as a developer were to develop a 200-acre land parcel. To get the plan approved for a layout/group housing, as a first step, I would have to relinquish the land meant for the “future” Public main roads that are marked in the BDA’s master plan that is active at that time. Sobha dream acres and prestige lakeside habitat are two very large and nice projects that have relinquished acres of land to the BDA for these future roads. The roads are yet to come up, but the land is the favour of BDA and whenever BDA gets the budget to develop these roads, the apartments would have nice roads around them and “through” them. BDA properly calculates the load on these roads and only then provides the approval to build apartments. You may well ask how did they even approve so many buildings, flats and villas at Adarsh Palm retreat.
As per BDA’s Master plan, Adarsh palm retreat has 6 entry/exits. All these have blocked as “private” roads by Adarsh and affiliates. Some officials at BDA at the joint commissioner’s office might have also been involved in aiding this crime. These can’t be private roads and these are meant to be public. Instead of getting these roads opened to public these apartment owners are crying and trying to shift the blame on office goers and RMZ. These apartment owners are majority stakeholders in every death that happens in the area because they are the ones blocking these roads. The roads marked in these maps need to be opened to the public. BDA is sleeping, someone just needs to wake it up. MLA does not care. MP does not care.
http://opencity.in/documents/bda-revised-master-plan-2031-existing-proposed-land-use-maps-planning-district-12-belanduru-haraluru
Karnataka politicians are those outdated corrupt slouching donkeys! Voters voted for free electricity, some got free some got double bills and everyone got longer power cuts, but no one notices because they are either busy or happy for freebies!
They all collectively dumped lakes, to buy cheap lands and construct premium real estate! They all blocked rainwater’s exit path and left narrow roads with potholes for heavy traffic! And an eventual Water Scarcity!
Last time Siddharamaiah blamed it on heavy migration for which they were not prepared in past 50 years. Then Devegowda fans blamed it on migrants!
Overall, if things are right then our politicians are ready for stealing credit and if things are wrong then it’s always because of someone else, they will not hesitate to blame even their public!